Willpower

Pete: "If you don’t really want to quit there’s no pill, patch, or gum that will make you do it. When you really want to, you will."

That's what I've always heard.

Willpower is something any normal-minded person can call upon to an astonishing degree, but like most powers it's easier if you've practiced "can" instead of "can't."

I may have mentioned before: Mom started smoking when she was 17. She smoked for fifty years. One day while visiting her grandbaby, Mom was short of breath, and thought, here it is, the big C, or something.

Turned out it was really just an allergy-asthma attack, but she laid the cigs down cold turkey then and there. (She had practiced giving up cigs every year for Lent for decades.)

When she lays out the cards for solitaire, she says, she took up this version of sol because she loses readily and has to shuffle more. Keeps her hands busy. Still craving, thirty years later! BUT!! Thirty years later she's alive to meet MY new grandkid. And visit the gym twice a week.

Meanwhile, let me say I've always detested "morality taxes." Even if they worked as advertised and, instead of smuggling and black markets, people really did quit/reduce their smoking or gambling or drinking sugary drinks or using gasoline, then the gov't is just out of that "revenue," and they have to tax something else to make up for it. It's all unfair, posturing, and in a way enforcing a kind of State Religion.

tl;dr: Mom got clean. Gov't sux.